The transaction will give Statoil more than 375,000 net acres in the Williston Basin, which holds potential for oil production from the Bakken and Three Forks formations. Brigham also holds interests in 40,000 net acres in other areas.

The Norwegian company has offered $36.50 a share in an all-cash tender offer.

Last fall, Statoil inked a deal to pay pay $1.3 billion for properties in the Eagle Ford shale formation and team up with Canada’s Talisman Energy to develop them. Two years earlier, it paid roughly the same amount for a stake in Marcellus shale properties in the Northeast U.S. operated by Chesapeake Energy.

Statoil is among a number of foreign oil companies including France’s Total, China’s Cnooc and Australia’s BHP Billiton that are paying huge sums to enter U.S. shale rock formations.

last month, Statoil said it would give $5 million over five years to the University of Texas at Austin to fund research in geology, petroleum engineering and other areas of interest for the Norwegian oil company. The agreement was the biggest of its kind outside Norway for Statoil, which is two-thirds owned by the Norwegian government, and the donation builds on a relationship that the two institutions have had for many years, Statoil said.

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